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In a lengthy nationwide investigation of Better Business Bureaus across the country, CNN interviewed businesses, consumers, and watchdogs, ultimately learning that how consumers see the organizations as something different, and a good grade from a local Bureau doesn’t guarantee that a business is trustworthy. The Better Business Bureau isn’t a government entity that serves as a consumer watchdog: you’ll need to contact your state attorney general for that. There isn’t one single Better Business Bureau covering the whole country: there’s more than 100, which together form the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The Council does have standards: the former BBB in Los Angeles was shut down after a blogger managed to gain accreditation for the terrorist group Hamas, a prank that was aired on ABC News’ “20/20” in 2011. Your local Better Business Bureau doesn’t claim to be a consumer watchdog: if you ask (and CNN did) they will claim to be a mediator between consumers and businesses when pro...

Perhaps Target’s goal is to simplify our lives, reducing the number of boxes that we have to carry out of their stores. Probably not, though. There is no logic behind Target math , but at least now they’ll price match to a store with more logical pricing . Stuart sent along these examples from his local Target. A box containing four packets of applesauce costs $2… Put four times as many in a single box, and that’ll cost you an extra dollar. This may be because it’s harder to stock and move around the larger boxes, but it still makes no retail sense. The last time we checked, Target was in the retail business. by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

One way that ad-blocking programs make money is, paradoxically, by showing you some ads. The popular add-on AdBlock Plus shows users ads that it deems “acceptable” by default, and has been accused of charging some publishers a percentage of the ad income that otherwise would have been lost. Now the maker of AdBlock Plus, Eyeo, is changing how it decides which ads deserve unblocking. The “acceptable ads” whitelist is optional for users, but is turned on by default. The idea isn’t to abolish ads altogether, but to make the ads that people do see tolerable ones while supporting publishers. Small to medium publishers don’t have to pay to be let through, but large ones do. Eyeo hasn’t quantified what “large” means in this context. How it works now is that publishers and advertisers apply for a spot on the whitelist, and members of the company’s forum evaluate the ads in question. The company has made the final selections, but today they announced that an independent board will make the deci...

After 57 years of assisting nearly 20 million low-income students to finance their dreams of obtaining a higher education, the Federal Perkins Loan program could soon be grinding to a halt.  The Perkins Loan program , which has offered more than $41 million in low-interest loans to students at nearly 1,500 schools since 1958, is set to expire tonight unless Congress takes action to extend the availability for one year as provided under a resolution [ PDF ] in The Higher Education Act. According to U.S. News & World Report’s The Student Loan Ranger blog, barring the passage of the resolution – which currently seems unlikely – schools would be prohibited from issuing new Perkins loans to students who have not received them prior to Oct. 1, 2014. The potential end of the program doesn’t mean that students currently receiving Perkins loans are out of luck. Instead, as the Student Loan Ranger points out, students who already receive disbursements will continue to collect the loan...

Because torturing yourself by gazing at your ex’s profile pic on Facebook might not be punishment enough, Facebook is now testing video profile photos (really, profile videos) that can be up to seven seconds and will be set to loop over and over while you keep staring/crying. As part of a larger profile redesign for mobile that shows a bigger photo right smack in the middle of the user’s page, with a new bio section below it, Facebook is trying out looping profile videos . If you’re not a fan of the Harry Potteresque videos (a la the Daily Prophet , of course), you can of course keep a normal photo. The new profiles allows users to set up a profile photo that expires after a certain amount of time: fore cample, someone on vacation who might want their friends to know they’re off somewhere having more fun that everyone else, by adding a note to their photo saying something like “vacation mode!” Once you’re done being on vacation, the photo reverts to the old version so you won’t have to...

Do you refuse to buy anything at Bed Bath & Beyond without a coupon? So does everyone else, apparently. While the company is making plenty of sales, they aren’t as profitable as they used to be… something that experts attribute to the chain’s training its customers to always come in clutching a coupon. A discount of 20% on the wall sconce of your dreams might not seem like a killer deal, but it adds up if you bring a coupon every time you visit, and use a 20% coupon on every item that you purchase. (Yes, if you collect enough coupons, you can use more than one in a single shopping trip.) “These are expected now by most shoppers,” one investment analyst observed to the Washington Post while pondering 20% off coupons. Once shoppers are trained to not walk in the store unless they have a coupon, how do you bring them in without mailing them more coupons? That is the company’s marketing dilemma. Their sales are actually up, but profitability is down. The big-box store has also adapted...

So you’re stopped at a traffic light, when you see something interesting out the window. Of course, you pull out your phone and snap a photo to let all your friends on social media see whatever crazy thing you just saw — which is exactly what New Hampshire police think you’ll do, in violation of the state’s laws on cell phone use behind the wheel. And sometimes, that spectacle by the side of the road has been staged by law enforcement to catch you in the act. In one recent example, a woman received a $124 ticket after she snapped a photo at a red light of a man with a sign around his neck reading, “Repent! The end is near!” reports the Associated Press . She said her daughter begged her to take the photo with her phone, and now she’s regretting fulfilling that request: shortly after she took the photo she was pulled over and told the man with the sign was an undercover officer — and he’d just seen her breaking the state’s new law against using phones or other electronic devices while d...

ATMs tend to weigh quite a bit, that may be why would-be thieves often rely on the help of big machinery when attempting to make off with one of the money dispensing apparatuses — or its contents. Once such case occurred early this morning in North Dakota where ne’er-do-well(s) commandeered a forklift and tried to pilfer the contents of a Wells Fargo cash machine.  The Dickinson Press reports that while no money was stolen from the ATM, the forklift used in the attempted robbery sustained about $2,000 in damages. Police, who say they have no suspects, were alerted to the destruction of the ATM and the attempted theft of its contents after an alarm was triggered at around 12:14 a.m. Upon arriving at the scene, officers found the forklift – with keys inside – rammed into the ATM. A local business manager tells the Dickinson Press that the forklift used in the attempted robbery was taken from a nearby apartment location. The company says it will hand over any available surveill...

A federal appeals court has ruled that colleges are violating antitrust laws by profiting from student-athletes’ names and likenesses while these same students are forbidden from receiving any money. However, the same appeals panel struck down the lower court’s plan that would have allowed NCAA member schools to pay certain athletes up to $5,000 a year in deferred compensation. Last year, in a 2009 lawsuit filed by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon, a U.S. District Court determined that the NCAA’s prohibition against student-athletes being paid for anything related to their sport is an unlawful restraint of trade in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act . At the time, the judge said the NCAA could not stop schools from compensating students who played FBS football and Division I men’s basketball for the use of their likenesses through scholarships that cover the full cost of attending that college and through deferred payments of up to $5,000 per year that would ...

Kohl’s is joining the ranks of retailers like Target, Sam’s Club, IKEA, Costco, and countless others in bringing weary shoppers what they really want: something to snack on while traipsing down the aisles checking off items from their list. On Tuesday, Kohl’s began testing small in-store cafes at two of its locations in Wisconsin in an attempt to keep customers caffeinated and engaged while shopping, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. The new “Kohl’s Cafe” stores will serve select drinks from Caribou Coffee, as well as snacks, such as granola bars, breakfast bars, chips, cookies, and other quick-grab items. The idea behind the pilot cafes is to keep consumers in stores longer, increasing the chance they’ll buy more stuff. “You want the customer to dwell more,” Jon Grosso, executive vice president and director of stores for Kohl’s said. “You want them to spend time in the building.” The test is the latest venture in the company’s “Greatness Agenda,” an initi...

It’s one thing to walk into a business and demand cash, but police say a man suspected of robbing a Philadelphia nail salon sat through a manicure first, getting his nails nicely trimmed and buffed before grabbing cash from the register. According to police, the man came in near closing time and asked for a manicure, reports CBS Philly . When it was time to pay for the service, however, he demanded the cashier hand him money instead, allegedly pointing a gun at her. “It’s pretty nervy to sit into a nail salon and actually get a manicure and then produce a gun and announce a robbery you know. And he was very serious about what he was doing,” said a Philadelphia police captain. Surveillance video shows the suspect trying to snatch money from the worker’s hand and then grabbing for more in the register (if he did get any nail polish, he surely messed it up at that point). Police say he also stole a cell phone and money from a worker’s purse. Once he had what he wanted, he left. Police are...

TiVo’s new Bolt DVR has some neat-sounding functions — the ability to skip ad breaks at the press of a button [big asterisk] or speed up what you’re watching by 30% without screwing with the audio — and it’s also 4K compatible and provides an all-in-one portal for access to streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. But it does so, not just at a hefty retail price, but with a subscription requirement that might turn potential customers away. The TiVo Bolt comes with two hard drive sizes: 500 GB and 1,000 GB, for $300 and $400, respectively. Given that TiVo boxes can often be used to replace your cable company’s set-top receiver/DVR, that price isn’t really so bad when you spread the cost out over a few years. But after those first twelve months, you’ll need to start factoring in the TiVo subscription fee. This currently runs $150/year. So say you buy the 500GB one and keep it for four years before upgrading to something new. By that point, between the device cost and the subscription,...

Two moms wanted to take their daughters to see Taylor Swift when she played in St. Louis recently, but didn’t have tickets. That’s fine: that’s what the underground ticket economy is for, right? In theory, but they managed to get scammed twice in one night by two different ticket sellers, and missed the concert. The night of the concert, they found a listing for tickets through Craigslist. Nothing raised any warning flags for them, until they sent off an online payment and waited for the e-mail notification that their tickets had been transferred. They kept waiting, but no tickets came . Fine: there should be plenty of people hawking tickets outside the stadium doors, right? They found a friendly neighborhood scalper outside venue and got to business. “They went back and forth with each other, made us feel like we were getting really a bargain,” the mom who didn’t negotiate said. Counterfeit tickets aren’t a bargain at any price, though, and that’s what they bought. (Negotiating on the...

Thirteen companies are recalling nearly 1.3 million bicycles equipped with front disc brakes and quick-release levers that can cause the front tire to lock up or completely separate from the bike, posing an increased risk of injury to riders.  The voluntary recall, which involves 17 different bike brands produced between 1998 and 2015, was initiated because of the risk that an open quick-release lever can come in contact with the brake rotor and cause the front wheel to stop suddenly or separate from the bicycle. According to a notice from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the issue occurs when the quick-release lever is fully opened – meaning there is less than six millimeters of space between the lever and the disc brake rotor on the bike wheel. Bicycles that do not have disc brakes are not included in the recall. The CPSC released a video to assist owners in identifying if their bike is involved in the recall. There have been three incidents reported in which an open quic...

If you have a tough time making it through lunch because your morning cup of coffee just isn’t enough, one Massachusetts company says it has the perfect product — caffeinated peanut butter that packs a punch equal to a cup of coffee in just one tablespoon. No more sleeping through that PB&J. Steem touts its product as all-natural, with its only ingredients peanuts, salt, peanut oil and agave nectar, reports the Boston Herald . The caffeine comes from green-coffee extract that’s mixed into the spread. “It’s a time-saver; your two favorite products in one jar,” Steem co-founder Chris Pettazzoni told the Herald. This is also great news for people known to live off caffeine and peanut butter for long stretches of time due to sheer laziness (yes, I am that person, and I have no regrets). Unsurprisingly, the idea came from a conversation between Steem’s business partners, who were trying to drum up new hangover cures. Because who hasn’t dug into a tub of peanut butter with a spoon after ...

After a protest at one of its Texas stores, Whole Foods says it will no longer sell products made using a prison labor program. The company has sold tilapia and goat cheese produced through a Colorado inmate program at some stores since 2011, and now plans to have the products out of stores by April 2016 or sooner. A prison reform advocate who organized a protest at a Whole Foods store in Houston this past weekend said the company told him it’d be changing its policy. Though other companies sell products produced through inmate programs, he said it was hypocritical of Whole Foods to do so, due to how the company presents itself. “They say they care about the community, but they’re enhancing their profit off of poor people,” he told the Associated Press , adding that prisoners usually don’t make much money for their work. A Whole Foods spokesman said that the company had sourced prisoner-made products as a way to “help people get back on their feet and eventually become contributing mem...

Lawmakers on Tuesday continued their mission to protect consumers from unscrupulous players in the for-profit college industry by introducing legislation that would impose stiffer penalties and restrictions on the leaders of such institutions.  The Students Before Profit Act – introduced by Senators Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, and Dick Durbin, of Illinois – aims to protect students from deceptive practices and bad actors in the for-profit college sector by better holding schools and their executives accountable for violations and poor performance. “For-profit colleges and their executives shouldn’t be able to get away with cheating students and leaving them with huge debt loads while these schools rake in big profits off of federal loans,” Senator Warren said in a statement. “This bill creates better tools to strengthen accountability and to protect both students and taxpayers when colleges and their executives break the law.” Under the Act, ...

If you have AT&T wireless service, your voice/data plan is going to cost you the same amount of money each month regardless of your home address. But AT&T’s broadband division isn’t taking this one-price-fits-all approach, and is continuing to sell broadband access that can range in price by $40/month, depending on where you live… and apparently whether Google Fiber is in the area. Yesterday, the Death Star touted GigaPower availability in more than a half-dozen new GigaPower markets, including Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, Orlando, Miami, and San Antonio. We noticed that — rather than make a big splash about this news with one huge press release — AT&T broke down each market into its own statement. Why? One reason has to be that prices can vary so much from area to area. In Atlanta and Nashville, GigaPower starts at $70/month for 1Gbps data speeds. But in Chicago and Miami, where AT&T boasts of now offering “lower prices,” the monthly rate is $80, but for 300 Mbps data ...

Netflix customers who’ve wished they could download content to bring with them on their mobile devices when they fly still won’t be able to do that, but they will be able to stream video on some Virgin America planes by way of a new partnership that gives Netflix subscribers free WiFi. The offer will last until March 2, 2016, the two companies said in a press release , and is only available on those planes equipped with Virgin America’s new ViaSat WiFi, which the airline says delivers internet speeds that are typically eight to 10 times faster than any other in-flight WiFi system. “This advances our goal to bring Netflix to members wherever they are and whenever they want,” Bill Holmes, global head of business development at Netflix said. “For us, the future of streaming technology is about delivering an on-demand service that takes advantage of the expansion of Wi-Fi to public places, parks, and now airplanes.” To access free WiFi on Virgin planes included in the partnership, passeng...

A year after Twitter began dipping its toes in the waters of e-commerce by testing “Buy Now” buttons,buttons, the company is expanding its foray into retail sales with new partnerships intended to give more businesses the ability to sell their wares directly through Twitter. According to the official Twitter blog, it has made deals with e-commerce platforms Bigcommerce, Demandware, and Shopify. These partnerships will enable retailers and brands like Best Buy, Adidas, and PacSun to sell their products straight to customers without requiring them to take their eyes off their Twitter feed. “Today, as we begin rolling out to a wider group of platforms and partners, people will have even more opportunities to discover and purchase products from the brands they love on Twitter,” Nathan Hubbard, Twitter’s head of commerce, writes in a blog post about the new expansion. While the buttons are, for now, a U.S.-only option, Twitter believes the step will open a larger revenue stream beyond adv...

Beginning tomorrow, October 1, Target will price-match the websites of 29 major retailers in stores and for purchases from their website. These include the usual big names that you might expect, like Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy, but also some major specialty retailers like Sports Authority and cosmetics retailer Ulta. Target has only price-matched the websites of a few retailers until now: those were Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Toys ‘R’ Us, and Babies ‘R’ Us. The new list expands price-matching beyond the online outlets of local retailers with physical stores. If you don’t happen to have a Buy Buy Baby in your area, for example, but they have an excellent sale, Target will price-match the website. Target’s existing price-matching policy doesn’t allow customers to match with items available from third-party sellers, who might post an item at an unrealistically low price for the sole purpose of price-matching. They’re also matching online prices from two warehouse clubs, Costco and Sam...

For the first time since the company’s founding, Ralph Lauren will not be running the Ralph Lauren Corporation. The 75-year-old plans to stay on as executive chairman and maybe design some ties or something, but the new chief executive officer will be Stefan Larsson, formerly head of Gap’s Old Navy brand and of H&M. If that sounds like an odd match to you, it might be. H&M and Old Navy are mostly known for fashionable(ish) clothes at cheap prices and quick turnaround when a new trend comes up. Ralph Lauren is known for… well, that’s sort of the problem that the company has right now. Ralph Lauren (the company) has a lot of labels . It’s a designer line that you can’t afford, and then some sort of affordable lines, and then some factory outlets that are even more affordable, furniture and paint, and some clothing items that license the name but come from other companies. The company has been heading toward developing its luxury brands and seeking higher prestige, yet hired their...

Earlier this year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launched a public probe into potentially anti-consumer practices of the student loan servicing industry . More than 30,000 people responded, leading the Bureau, along with the Departments of Education and Treasury, to release a framework they hope will curb these questionable practices, promote borrower success, and minimize defaults. The report [ PDF ] highlights the key issues that concern many borrowers and includes recommendations on how those problems can be handled. Borrower Benefits and Consumer Protections Borrowers complained about their difficulties in obtaining accurate and comprehensible information on alternative repayment programs and other benefits, including income-driven repayment plans. In some cases, commenters said their servicers, instead of providing information regarding payment plans, had suggested they postpone payments through forbearance or deferment, or instructed them that the only available option...

Amazon’s latest attempt to quickly and cheaply deliver packages got underway in Seattle on Tuesday with the launch of the company’s consumer-turned-courier program, Amazon Flex.  The program, which was first speculated about in June , allows any regular ol’ Joe to earn $18-$25 per hour by delivering Amazon Prime Now packages out of their own cars while out-and-about. According to the Amazon Flex site, delivery drivers must own their own cars, have valid drivers’ licenses, be over the age of 21, pass a background check, and own an Android smartphone. For now, the company is prohibiting deliveries from being made on bikes or on foot. Once drivers are approved, they will be given access to Amazon’s proprietary delivery app, which can be used to choose delivery shifts any day of the week. The shifts can be as short as two hours or as long as 12 hours, but must be in two-hour increments. A driver’s delivery roster and area of coverage is then determined by the length of their...